‘Born-Again’ Conservative : Hamilton Jordan Running as Georgia ‘Good Ol’ Boy’

It is Hamilton Jordan Day at the American Legion post in this coastal resort community, and the star of the show is making his pitch for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator.

This is decidedly not the Hamilton Jordan of old--the “Peck’s bad boy” of the Jimmy Carter White House, notorious for refusing to return phone calls, treating congressmen with disdain and embroiling himself in peccadilloes with women at diplomatic parties and bars. “Hannibal Jerkin,” House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. once dubbed him.

This is the new Ham Jordan, a “good ol’ boy” and staunch family man from rural Georgia who says he has recovered from lymphatic cancer, seen the political light and is now a “born-again” conservative.

“Fifteen years ago, when I first went into government, I thought government could do everything,” Jordan tells the crowd of about 50 persons who have gathered on a hot, muggy Saturday evening for a $5-a-plate dinner of catfish, cole slaw, baked beans and hush puppies.

Now, the 41-year-old ex-White House chief of staff says, as if recanting a grievous mortal sin, “I have a keen sense of the limitations of government.”

How well Jordan’s new-found conservatism plays with voters is a key question as Georgia Democrats prepare for next Tuesday’s Senate primary. Jordan is locked in a tight race with Rep. Wyche Fowler Jr. of Atlanta to decide who gets to take on Mack Mattingly, 55, Georgia’s first Republican senator since Reconstruction.

Fowler, 45, an urbane attorney and former Atlanta City Council president whose congressional district encompasses most of Atlanta, has built a solid record in the House, even winning a post on the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

He is a formidable and polished campaigner, having held his congressional seat in the majority-black district against often heavy opposition ever since Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young vacated it in 1977 to become Carter’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Both candidates support deep spending cuts to balance the federal budget and are opposed to new taxes. But Fowler’s votes for the equal rights amendment, against aid to the Nicaraguan rebels and to cancel the MX missile leave him open to an attack from the right, and Jordan has moved straight in.

Aiming his pitch at the rural and small-town Georgians who still make up a majority of the state’s voters, Jordan portrays Fowler as a pawn of big labor, as soft on defense and as “someone who will just cancel out Sam Nunn’s vote,” referring to the state’s popular conservative Democratic senator.

Prime Democratic Target

It is a race being closely watched nationally as Democrats try to regain control of the Senate. Mattingly, a Yankee transplant and former IBM salesman, narrowly upset Democrat Sen. Herman Talmadge in 1980 after the Senate denounced Talmadge for financial improprieties. Democrats consider Mattingly’s seat to be a prime target this year.

Political analysts are split over the likely outcome of the Democratic primary.

“Ham has gotten away very well with positioning himself, as some people might say, a little to the right of Attila,” said Claibourne H. Darden Jr., a prominent Atlanta pollster and political consultant. “Wyche Fowler has done as well as he can, trying his absolute best to position himself as a conservative. But the race is in Hamilton’s hand.”

However, Loch Johnson, a University of Georgia political scientist, predicts that Jordan’s “good ol’ boy” campaign will ultimately miscarry. “There’s a lot of generalities but little substance in Hamilton Jordan’s performance,” he said. “He’s like they say about the Mississippi River--a mile wide but an inch deep.”

That lesson was hammered home recently as Jordan was discussing his Central American policy at a civic club luncheon in Valdosta, a town near the Florida border. A club member told Jordan that he fears U.S. aid to the anti-Sandinista rebels could lead to another war like Vietnam.

Comments on Fighting

“I don’t want my little boy or your little boy to go to die in the jungles of Central America,” said Jordan, referring to his 2-year-old son, Jonathan. “But, if the time came that they needed to go there to defend their country, I would want my little boy to go and I think you would want your little boy to go, too.”

“Well,” the man replied, “ I don’t want mine to go, so that’s why I am not going to vote for you.”

The Carter connection appears to be of little help to Jordan. Although Georgia voters are still proud that Carter, a former Georgia governor, made it to the White House in 1976, perhaps a truer measure of their current political sympathies was the 69% majority vote they gave Ronald Reagan in 1984. Jordan’s new-found conservatism “better run pretty deep,” says Wray Avera, who organized the day for Jordan here.

Jordan has the behind-the-scenes backing of many of Georgia’s top Democratic leaders, including Gov. Joe Frank Harris, whose opponent Fowler supported in the bruising 1982 Democratic gubernatorial primary runoff.

“By and large, the Democratic leadership thinks (Fowler is) too liberal to beat Mattingly,” Darden said.

Runoff Election Likely

A runoff election between Fowler and Jordan is considered likely. A runoff will be held Sept. 2 if none of the four Democratic candidates gets more than 50% of the primary vote.

The two other candidates--state Rep. John Russell and Gerald Belsky, a follower of radical politician Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr.--are together expected to take around 10% of the vote. If the Democratic race goes to a runoff, however, Jordan is expected to pick up most of Russell’s conservative support.

Fowler is strengthened by his edge in finances--the most recent Federal Elections Commission reports show Fowler ahead of Jordan $606,000 to only $87,000--and by strong support in his congressional district.

A similar down-home boy vs. the city-slicker contest has shaped up in that district between former Atlanta City Councilman John Lewis and Georgia state Sen. Julian Bond.

Campaign Strains Friendship

Lewis, the son of a rural Alabama sharecropper, and Bond, whose father and grandfather were both college presidents, were allies in the turbulent civil rights movement of the 1960s and have remained friends since then. But that friendship has been stretched to the breaking point as they compete for the nomination to succeed Fowler.

Bond, 46, who has a reputation for intellect and glib sophistication, has a commanding lead over Lewis, also 46, a thick-tongued man known for his courage on the front lines of the movement and his honest if plodding stance on the Atlanta City Council.

It was Lewis who headed the “Bloody Sunday” voting rights protest march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in 1965 and was bludgeoned into unconsciousness as state troopers and mounted sheriff’s deputies moved in with clubs and tear gas.

In a thinly veiled reference to Bond, Lewis said during a campaign appearance, “Some of them can talk that talk, but they can’t walk that walk.”

The only suspense in the race appears to be whether Atlanta attorney Charles Johnson, 37, will make enough headway to deny Bond a primary victory without a runoff.